The 39 Clues: Cahills vs. Vespers Book 5: Trust No One

by Linda Sue Park

Dr. Siffright stiffened. “Actually, the real question is whether I can trust you.”

  Amy made up her mind quickly. She looked Dr. Siffright in the eye. “I’m sorry,” she said. “What Atticus meant was, we’re in trouble and we need your help. This is probably going to sound crazy, but our friends have been kidnapped. . . .”

  With the three boys chipping in occasionally, Amy laid out the whole mess with the Vespers. Dr. Siffright listened without interrupting, intent but expressionless, pulling at a thread in her napkin.

  When at last they were finished, a shroud of silence fell over the table. Amy waited as long as she could, then finally spoke.

  “I know it sounds unbelievable,” she said, “but every word is the truth. If we don’t give Folio Seventy-four to the Vespers, one of our friends will die.”

  Dr. Siffright frowned, clearly deep in thought. “I do believe you,” she said. “At least, I think I do. Actually, what you’ve said explains a lot.”

  It was her turn now. “About a year and a half ago, I went to Italy. Like many people who learn about the Voynich, I’d become obsessed. I gave up trying to decode it, but I still want to know as much as I can about it. I decided to see if I could find any of the missing folios.”

  Dr. Siffright went on to explain that she had indeed located a mysterious manuscript page. “I found it in a monastery — not the one where Voynich found the original manuscript, but a different one. They had hundreds of boxes, files, chests — all filled with old manuscripts. It took me months to comb through them.”

  “And they let you take it?” Atticus asked.

  Dr. Siffright smiled wanly. “For a price. Let’s just say, I live in a small apartment these days. I had to sell my house to get enough money to buy it.”

  Amy resisted the urge to glance at her other tablemates. She sold her house for it?! What Dr. James said about her — intense and single-minded when it comes to the Voynich — that sounds like an understatement now.

  “It turns out someone else wanted it, too,” Dr. Siffright said. “Although I didn’t know that at first. I brought the folio back and began the process of authentication. I didn’t tell Yale or anyone else about it. I didn’t want to broadcast the fact that I had it, because if it proved not to be genuine, my reputation as a scholar could have been damaged.”

  She was now twisting the napkin in earnest. “I’d been home for a few weeks when I started noticing strange things. First my car was broken into. And my apartment — twice. At work, they sent out a notice that several e-mail accounts at Brown had been hacked.

  “Worst of all, I started to suspect that someone was following me. I asked myself a hundred times a day if it was real or if I was just being paranoid.”

  She looked from Jake to Atticus and back again. “Astrid was the only person I could talk to about this. In fact, she said that similar things were happening to her, and like me, she thought it might be just her imagination.”

  Amy saw the dismay on the faces of both Jake and Atticus as they exchanged glances.

  “She never said anything to us,” Jake said.

  “I wish we’d known!” Atticus said in distress. “Maybe we could have helped somehow —” He stopped, tears filling his eyes. He wiped them away angrily with his sleeve.

  “She probably didn’t want to worry you,” Dr. Siffright said.

  “That would be . . . like her,” Jake said, his voice catching a little.

  Amy felt their pain in the pit of her stomach. It’s bad enough when someone you love dies. But to think that they were afraid before they died . . . She remembered the panic in Dan’s eyes when he was lying on the ground, and picked at the blister on her neck again. She knew she shouldn’t — it was getting irritated — but her hand kept going there of its own accord.

  Dr. Siffright reached out to touch Atticus’s arm. “She wasn’t alone in this,” she said gently. “We were helping each other through it.”

  Jake nodded. “Thanks,” he said.

  After a moment, Dr. Siffright went on. “Astrid suggested that I hide the page somewhere very secure. At the time I had already booked a trip to Brazil — I love it, I’ve been here many times. So I brought the page with me and hid it here. It’s so remote — I thought it would be safe. But because I felt like I was being followed, I decided to let Astrid know where it was, just in case” — she paused — “anything happened to me.”

  “That’s how we found you,” Atticus said. “The coded e-mails.”

  Dr. Siffright smiled. “Nice job,” she said. “That tells me you’re Astrid’s kids for sure.”

  “And we had help from Dr. James,” Jake said, “at Yale.”

  “You met Kathryn?” Dr. Siffright said. “Did she tell you I was crazy?” She laughed softly. “No, she wouldn’t, she’s too polite. But I know she thinks I am.” She paused. “The line between passionate and crazy can be a thin one. Maybe she’s right. I mean, here I am, guarding a piece of paper for months. . . .”

  Dr. Siffright shrugged, then went on. “So, from what you’re telling me, if I wasn’t imagining things, then it’s the Vespers who’ve been following me.”

  “And broke into your apartment and tried to hack your e-mail,” Dan said. “It sounds like exactly the sort of things they’d do.”

  Dr. Siffright looked at Dan apologetically. “By the way, that’s why I pulled the knife on you,” she said. “I thought maybe you were part of — of whoever was following me.”

  Dan shrugged. “I’d have done the same,” he said, then grinned. “But I’d have picked a way better knife.”

  Amy decided that the conversation had gone on long enough. “Will you help us, Dr. Siffright? Will you give us the manuscript page? I promise that if there’s anything I can do to get it back to you, I will.”

  Silence followed. Tension stiffened Amy’s shoulders; Dr. Siffright looked like she was about to make a decision. And if it’s no, it’ll be final. She won’t change her mind.

  A waiter was approaching the table. Their disks were still red-side up, but he came closer anyway, smiling broadly.

  Amy felt a flare of annoyance. Not now, she thought. Don’t bother us now. All the other waiters have left us alone — can’t you see that our disks are red?

  As she picked up her disk to show him the red side, the thought echoed in her mind: All the other waiters have left us alone. . . .

  Amy screamed before she had even finished the thought.

  “ATTICUS!”

  The waiter’s smile contorted into a terrible leer. He whipped the huge knife off the tray and hurled it at Atticus; in the next split second, the knife was followed by the skewer.

  Dr. Siffright reacted so quickly that it seemed like Amy’s scream was still reverberating. She threw her six-foot-plus frame in front of Atticus. Together they crashed to the floor when Atticus’s chair tipped over backward.

  Amy, Dan, and Jake leapt to their feet. Jake went for the waiter, who flung the tray at him. The tray conked Jake squarely in the face and spattered hot meat drippings in his eyes; he staggered back, yelping in pain.

  Meanwhile, Dan and Amy scrambled to the other side of the table, tripping over the chairs in their haste.

  Dan’s eyes widened. There was blood everywhere. Atticus lay on the floor, eyes closed and his body so limp that he had to be —

  Unconscious, Dan thought, please please let him be unconscious and not —

  “Dan!” Jake shouted. “The waiter!”

  Dan looked up just in time to see the doors to the kitchen swing closed. A noise that was half growl, half shout rose from Dan’s throat as he ran toward the kitchen.

  Bad timing: Dan burst through the swinging doors right into a full cadre of skewer-bearing waiters. With a deafening clatter, Dan ended up on the floor amid the debris of a mini-explosion: skewers, trays, knives, grilled meat, and very angry waiters.

  Dan got up and tried to continue the pursuit, but slipped on a pork chop and fell again. He pounded his fist on the floor in frustration.
/>
  Too late. Whoever he is, he’s got a big head start by now.

  Ignoring outraged protests from the other waiters, Dan hurried back to the dining room. A crowd had gathered around their table.

  “Atticus?” he said, his voice hoarse with strain. “Atticus! Let me through, you idiots!” He shouldered, elbowed, and kneed people out of his way.

  Dan was nearly sick with relief when he saw Atticus sitting up, supported by Jake. “He’s okay,” Jake said. “The skewer got him in the earlobe — a lot of blood, but no real damage. Go help Amy!”

  The knife had sliced into Dr. Siffright’s neck.

  “Get me another napkin,” Amy said tersely. She was applying pressure to Dr. Siffright’s wound with a napkin already soaked in blood.

  Dan grabbed two clean napkins from an unoccupied table. He handed them to Amy, then knelt down next to her. Dr. Siffright’s face had turned so white it was almost blue; her eyes were glazed and unfocused.

  “Did somebody call 9-1-1?” Dan asked.

  As if in response, he heard sirens outside. A few minutes later, a team of paramedics rushed into the restaurant.

  Dan and Amy relinquished their places to the EMTs. Working quickly but gently, they applied a pressure bandage to Dr. Siffright’s neck and loaded her onto a gurney.

  As they prepared to wheel her out, a paramedic bent over Dr. Siffright, then straightened and looked around.

  “Dan? Is there someone here named Dan? She wants to talk to you.”

  Dan rushed to the gurney. He leaned over so he could hear the weak thread of words coming from Dr. Siffright’s pale lips.

  “You know,” she whispered. “You . . . you know . . .”

  Then to Dan’s horror, her eyes rolled back in her head and she slipped into unconsciousness.

  Hours later, the four friends sat on the beds in Amy and Dan’s hotel room. They had all been questioned by the police. None of the restaurant staff knew who the “waiter” was; he had been wearing the right uniform, no one had even really noticed him. The police had concluded that the attack was most likely a random act by an unbalanced individual.

  Unbalanced — not exactly the word Dan would have used to describe the Vespers. More like loony to the nth degree.

  Dr. Siffright was in intensive care, no visitors allowed. When they called, the doctor would only say that Dr. Siffright had lost a lot of blood and they would have to wait and see how she responded to treatment.

  Atticus was gingerly fingering the tape on his earlobe; a paramedic on the scene had cleaned up the cut and bandaged it. Jake too had been treated, with ointment on the superficial burns on his face. Dan thought Atticus was in the best shape of the four of them. It turned out that Atticus, to his eternal embarrassment, had fainted when the skewer hit. The assault had happened so quickly that it seemed the danger hadn’t really sunk in for him.

  Jake was pacing the room in a boil of fury and self-blame. “I let my guard down,” he said. “I was all relaxed — the food was so good and we were talking and I wasn’t alert —”

  “Cut it out,” Dan said. “There’s no use blaming yourself. We have to figure out what to do next.”

  Everyone looked at Amy, who avoided their glances and seemed preoccupied with the blister on her neck. When she finally did speak, her voice was a faded copy of itself.

  “We’ve got nothing,” she said. Dan saw her glance at her watch; even that small normal act was a reminder of their burdens, with the Madrigal ring embedded in the dial’s casing. “And as long as Dr. Siffright can’t have any visitors, we can’t get anything more from her.”

  “We could try sneaking in,” Jake suggested. “I could dress up as — as a janitor, maybe, and try to get into her room to talk to her.”

  “Wait.” Atticus did a little butt-bounce on the bed and turned to Dan. “She said something to you — right before they took her away, didn’t she?”

  “Yeah, but it was hardly anything,” Dan said. “She passed out really fast.”

  “But what did she say?” Atticus insisted.

  Dan frowned. “She didn’t get to it,” he said. “She was just starting to say something — she said, ‘You know —’ and that was it.”

  “That’s all?” Amy asked. “Are you sure?”

  Dan made a helpless shrug and saw Amy’s shoulders sag even lower. “She said it twice. ‘You know, you know.’ Does that help?” he said, his voice bitter with disappointment.

  “Actually, maybe it does,” Atticus said. “What if she wasn’t saying, ‘you know,’ the way you do when it doesn’t mean anything, but it was more like, ‘You know.’ I mean, she did ask for you, specifically. Maybe you know something the rest of us don’t.”

  “What could I know? I only just met her!” Dan said.

  Now Jake was sitting up straighter, too. “Try the visualization thing,” he suggested, “from when you first saw her.”

  “But I didn’t even know who she was then! And besides, you all got there, like, a couple seconds later —”

  Dan stopped. As soon as Jake had said “visualization,” his mind had immediately clicked back to the swimming-pool patio. He had been on his hands and knees — Dr. Siffright had said something — what had she said? “Get away from there.”

  From where?

  “The crack!” he shouted. “I was looking at the crack —” He jumped to his feet and headed for the door.

  “What crack?” the other three said all together, as if they’d rehearsed the timing.

  “Never mind — just come on!” Dan yelled.

  The pools were lit, glowing a brilliant turquoise. The patio area was mostly dark. No one was in either pool, but there were a few people enjoying the hot tub.

  Dan led the group to the point near the fence where the wood decking met the brickwork.

  “I was right around here somewhere,” he said, his voice low.

  “Flashlight app,” Jake said, and they all pulled their phones out of their pockets.

  “Spread out,” Dan said.

  The crack was not a straight line. It curved artistically in loose S-shapes. At arm’s-width distance from each other, they began their search.

  Less than a minute later, Dan called out softly to the others. “I can see something,” he said. It made sense; it was very close to where he’d been searching when Dr. Siffright threatened him with the butter knife.

  Three other cell phones joined his, shining light into the narrow crack.

  “I see it!” Atticus said excitedly.

  The object was only an inch or two below the surface, but the opening was way too small for their fingers, even Atticus’s.

  “Easy enough to drop it in there,” Jake said, “but how was she going to get it out? There’s no way her fingers would have fit, either.”

  Amy stood up. “I’ll be right back,” she said and ran into the hotel.

  “Um.” Atticus looked at the other two boys with his eyebrows raised. “That was kind of — sudden.”

  Jake turned to Dan. “Should one of us go after her?”

  Dan considered for a moment. “Let’s give her a minute,” he said. She wasn’t upset. No, that’s not right, she’s always upset these days. But she seemed okay. He hoped he was reading her right.

  The boys began discussing the possibility of removing some of the deck’s wood planks.

  “These three boards,” Jake said, drawing his finger across the wood. “We could take out the nails with a hammer, and then pry them up. It’ll take a while — we’ll have to do it in the middle of the night.”

  “We’ll need a saw, too,” Dan said. “It’d be a lot easier to pry up a shorter length of board, wouldn’t it?”

  “But that might make a lot of noise,” Atticus pointed out. “I think early in the morning would be better — before people want to swim, but late enough so maybe they’ll think the noise is construction or something.”

  “I don’t know,” Jake said. “If anyone sees us, what excuse could we give for tearing up the
patio?”

  “We can’t buy the tools until the shops open in the morning,” Dan said. “We’ll have to do it in broad daylight.”

  “Looks like that’s our only option,” Jake said grimly. “So let’s make a list. Hammer, saw — what kind of saw would be best? And how about a crowbar, that might help —”

  “A crowbar?” It was Amy, approaching them with her toiletries bag. “I don’t think so. Could you give me a little light here?”

  Jake directed a flashlight-app beam at the toiletries bag. Dan looked at Amy quizzically. “You have a zit emergency?” he asked.

  Amy fished out what she was looking for. “Let’s not do a demolition job until we try this first,” she said and held out her hand.

  Tweezers.

  The tweezers worked. With Amy doing the honors, tugging first at one corner then the other, a sturdy sheet of laminated plastic emerged from the crack.

  Back in the hotel room, everyone gathered around to examine their find.

  Dr. Siffright had put Folio 74 inside a clear plastic folder. Then the folder had been laminated — not in the standard school or home-office way, but heavy-duty, with sealed edges identical to those used in the packaging of electronic devices.

  “Wow, she was smart,” Atticus said. “It’s like when you buy a calculator or something — those packages are always impossible to open.”

  “Kept it nice and dry, and you don’t even need to open it to see both sides,” Dan added.

  One side of the folio was covered with line after line of the instantly recognizable handwriting in “Voynichese.” But there was no use spending any time on the un-decodable lines, so she turned the sheet of plastic over.

  On the other side was a beautiful and elaborate drawing of three astronomical circles. Similar to those they had seen previously in the manuscript, the circles appeared to indicate phases of different celestial bodies, possibly the sun, the earth, and the moon.

  “They’re not the same as the other ones,” Dan said immediately. Amy recognized the authority in his voice; she knew he was accessing the photographic-memory part of his brain.